Brit 100
Via Mark Trodden of Cosmic Variance and Lubos Motl, I learned about Universities UK’s EurekaUK report on their choices for the top 100 discoveries by UK universities of the last 50 years. Mark picks out the ones most relevant to physics and astronomy and Lubos does his usual dyspeptic rant, but neither mentions the two I found most interesting.
The focus is technology with implications (and social science) but some pure research made it too. My first selection is probably the most important development in fundamental science of the last half-century as well as the most important technological development of that period:
That discovery has revolutionized medicine and biology given birth to biotechnology. The discovery is also one of the crowning triumphs of the revolution in our understanding of the nature of matter that grew out of quantum mechanics and the exploration of the atom. The twentieth century was a century of unifications, but none was more important than the unification of physics, chemistry and biology that came out of atomic theory and quantum mechanics.
The second selection I made is not without its own important technological implications, but is mostly important for the way it helped revolutionize the our understanding of the history of the Earth.
This proved to be the key to confirming and understanding continental drift and plate tectonics, the Rosetta Stone of geology. There are many other interesting discoveries on the list, as well as many that Lubos has concluded are silly, leftist, or at least not string theory.
The focus is technology with implications (and social science) but some pure research made it too. My first selection is probably the most important development in fundamental science of the last half-century as well as the most important technological development of that period:
Revealing the recipe of life
James Watson and the late Francis Crick unveiled the double helix structure of the deoxyribonucleic acid or DNA on February 28, 1953.
That discovery has revolutionized medicine and biology given birth to biotechnology. The discovery is also one of the crowning triumphs of the revolution in our understanding of the nature of matter that grew out of quantum mechanics and the exploration of the atom. The twentieth century was a century of unifications, but none was more important than the unification of physics, chemistry and biology that came out of atomic theory and quantum mechanics.
The second selection I made is not without its own important technological implications, but is mostly important for the way it helped revolutionize the our understanding of the history of the Earth.
Seafloor spreading and plate tectonics
In 1963, two British marine geologists discovered huge matching magnetic 'stripes' in the rocks by ocean ridges.
This proved to be the key to confirming and understanding continental drift and plate tectonics, the Rosetta Stone of geology. There are many other interesting discoveries on the list, as well as many that Lubos has concluded are silly, leftist, or at least not string theory.
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